This full moon was exact at 13.53 degrees of Pisces at 3:03 AM on September 6th.

How inappropriate to call this planet Earth when it is clearly Ocean.

— Arthur C. Clarke

The moon is full and the waters are rising, overflowing cities. Torrential rains are flooding people's homes. This full moon conjunct Neptune--modern ruler of Pisces and Roman God of the Sea--is turning our attention to the destructive power of water. Natural disasters like these hurricanes have the power to make us realize how small we are. Conversely, they have the power to bring people together, to make us larger with our common humanity.

Full moons bring events to fullness. The word "disaster" literally means "ill-starred," a calamity reflected in the positions of the stars or planets. I don't believe that astrological patterns cause events, but they do mirror them. As above, so below. I'm struck by how much this full moon feels like February's solar eclipse in Pisces. Eclipse energy moves in six-month cycles. In February, the new moon was conjunct Neptune. Jupiter was opposite Uranus and square Pluto, then as now. I wrote about loss, about the feeling of water washing everything away, about collective grief and collective action. It's relevant at this full moon as well.

The traditional ruler of Pisces, Jupiter, holds the energy of expansion. And true to Jupiter, these hurricanes are giant. Jupiter's opposition to Uranus in 2017 could be summed up in two words: "big surprises." We're not done here. We can't ignore how small we are. We can't ignore the suffering of others far away from us. We can't ignore climate change. Pisces, as usual, overwhelms us with the whole of it and makes us feel everything. We experience phenomenons like this one collectively.

I'll say of this full moon what I said about the solar eclipse in February. It's about compassion in it's highest form: being able to empathize with someone whose experience is far different from yours, even someone you once hated or feared. A Pisces moon asks us to find some universality in our experience, to imagine what it must be like to be someone else, and then to act on that empathy.